1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an automatic apparatus for connecting a thread to a surgical needle by inserting a front end of the thread into a hole formed in a rear end of the needle and then pressing the rear end of the needle to clamp the thread in the hole of the needle.
2. Related Art Statement
In the surgical operation, there have been widely used surgical needles having threads previously connected to the needles in order to connect parts of a patient body. There are prepared a quite large kinds of the surgical needles, and some of them have very small diameters such as 1 mm or less. It should be noted that threads to be connected to such thin needles have also very small diameters.
There have been developed various methods for connecting the threads to the surgical needles, and in the view point of the facileness in use, a surgical needle having a thread clamped in a hole formed in the rear end of needle has been preferably used. FIG. 1 illustrates such a surgical needle. In case of connecting a thread S to a surgical needle N, a front end of thread is manually inserted into a hole Nb formed in an end face of a rear end Na and then the rear end Na of the needle is pressed with the aid of a clamping machine to clamp the front end of thread S in the hole Nb. During this manual operation, an operator watches the thread S and needle N under a microscope. It is apparent that this connecting method requires an experience of labors and further the efficiency of the work is very low. Therefore, the manufacturing cost of the surgical needle is liable to be increased and possibility of occurrence of unusable needles in large. Moreover, since the operation has to be effected by inspecting the front end of thread S and the rear end Na of needle N under the microscope or magnifier, the eyes of the workers might be fatigued to a large extent.